Five glances into the abyss
December 26th, 2006 4:09:05 pm pst by 
Sterling Camden
Chris Boese tagged me with the “five things” meme, apparently not realizing that I had already posted on this and even tagged her. Oh well, another reason to post, and a chance to tag five more people.
But I’d like to make these five things a bit more interesting, so I’ll follow the suggestion of Dave Rogers (via Shelley) and attempt to name five things that I don’t know about myself:
- I don’t know what I want to do with my career. I enjoy software development, but that doesn’t entirely satisfy. I love to write, but I could never completely give up creating software. Keeping my eyes open for the write opportunity.
- Regarding both writing and software development, I don’t know exactly how well I perform either activity. Sometimes I’m very proud of my work, and at other times I wonder if it isn’t all just stupid and pedestrian. Other people are usually complimentary, but the very fact that I get little constructive criticism makes me suspicious of the validity of this feedback.
- How well do I remember my own past? Can’t say for sure. My memories often seem crystal clear, but I’ve internally repeated these stories to myself so many times that I certainly could have made embellishment into fact.
- Am I a good and honorable human being? Very uncertain. At times I feel and act in ways that may seem noble, and at other times I could be exceptionally petty and deliberately cruel. But I’m beginning to think that question may be irrelevant.
- I don’t know if I believe in God. But I’m proud of that one.
I like this meme, because I’m becoming more radically agnostic every day, and not just about religion. Many questions do not need a premature answer, and we shouldn’t be afraid to say that we don’t know. I learned this lesson from debugging software: you don’t find the answers so much by constructing theories as by questioning your assumptions. When everyone wants to pull us into their camp, we should fight for our right to uncertainty. As Franklin said:
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
Now to tag five more people: Armchair Anarchist, Joseph, TDavid, Stu, and Chris again, just for spite 
. I won’t saddle you with the (now I realize how) difficult task of answering the unknown. You can just tell us the five things other people probably don’t know about you, if you’d prefer.
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Thanks for the tag, I hope I am able to enligthen people, albeit slightly, into some of the things that make me me.
[...] So I’ve been tagged by Sterlin Camden to do this 5 Things meme so here I am, meming away. [...]
Sorry about the double tag, dude. I’ll delve into the unknown once I get over my holiday leftovers food poisoning (bleh!)
Chris
Food poisoning, ouch! Well, at least there’s unknown number one: “I don’t know when to throw out leftovers.”
Hope you feel better soon, Chris!
OK, I finally got around to it. Appearing in my blog on January 3rd (2007!).
Cool, Stu. My FeedDemon awaits hungrily.
[...] Stu Savory responds to my tag: swimming Lake Constance and crashing a hang glider – not what I might have expected from an “overeducated, grumpy multilingual ex-pat Scot”, but mighty interesting. And his Vogon poem left my arms quite intact. [...]
Good for you to deconstruct the Tag You’re It “meme” which is similar to a chain letter, but I guess bloggers who like games can invent blog games, so let’s chalk one up for innovation, but I like how you reversed the confession, and bespoke 5 things that even you don’t know about you.
Very cool. Now fall back in the trust fall and hope your readers will catch you.
It could be a Life Changing Experience (a wannabe oxymoron if there ever was one).
You’ve been told many times before
messiahs pointed to the door,
no one had the guts to leave the temple.
God can be found, and will prove Himself to exist, and more than exist, but He cannot be found where everybody is shouting His name and acting all religious about it. Nor is He found in the religious leaders or anything they say or do.
Jesus pointed away from institutions and leadership, and pointed within: the kingdom of heaven is within you. Not in a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue. Heavens no.
Profound as always (is that another oxymoron?), Vaspers. “Heavens no” — that’s good. If I believe in God (a question that may come down to definitions after all), then I would believe in the one you’ve described.
“fall back in the trust fall and hope your readers will catch you.” That’s one to remember. I’ve often felt that way when pressing the Publish button.
[...] 2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are. Five glances into the abyss. [...]
Sterling, Your attitude seems healthy and promising to me – have things changed since you wrote this? As a former raging agnostic who is now a committed Christian, all I can tell you faith raises as many questions as it answers. This discovery was quite contrary to my expectations.
I still feel the same, not having a reason to change.
At the risk of inviting a sermon, how did you move from agnosticism to Christianity? I can understand the reverse, having traveled that path myself. I suppose it must have a lot to do with your “flavor” of faith.
No sermons, but it would take a while to explain. Suffice to say I reached a point in my life where I was looking for perspective. I started inquiring about Catholicism partly as a whim, frankly, and partly out of desperation. The more I learned, the more I realized my preconceived ideas about faith were completely wrong. This turned out to be a pleasant surprise. So I’m naturally curious how you moved the other way … ?
Part of that story is told here. After that, I became an Episcopalian for a while and was confirmed in that church. I liked the fact that using your noggin was encouraged, and that simultaneously holding faith and doubt was a usual occurrence. But after a while, the faith part seemed extraneous to me. I was holding onto it only as one keeps a childhood toy — just for the memories, not in order to use it. It was taking up space in my mental garage, so I let it go.
Of course, I still have a faith of sorts — but it isn’t a faith in anything specific. It’s an irrational optimism conjoined with an awe of the unknown.
Read the post – interesting. I don’t know too much about other Christian traditions, but you probably know that Catholicism is rigorously intellectual as well as driven by a faith. Thinkers such as Aquinas and Augustine make sense today, by my lights – far more than most modern writers of any inclination. Unfortunately, because faith does call for serious thought and understanding, people are often misled. One of the consequences is the cult phenomenon you discuss. However, we should remember that cults expose a flaw in man, not God. Also, humans develop a cult mentality just as easily in a “rational” framework – Nazism comes to mind.
That’s true — which is why I mistrust all frameworks, even the ones I employ.